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10/19/2005

The ultimate TiVo example


If you still have any doubts as to who is in charge of business relationships, hear this:

    "I TiVo church every Sunday."
That may sound innocuous, but let me explain. The 37-year-old who told me that wasn't talking about recording and playing back his favorite television preacher. He was talking about the way his family attends a live Sunday morning worship experience.

The church has two services on Sunday morning, with a social time in between. His family is a bit too crazy to get ready in time for the 8:45 start time of the first service and they'd rather not be in church past noon, which is when the later service is dismissed. So they come around 9:15, listen to the sermon, enjoy the coffee time, and then leave after the music in the 10:30 service.
    They have designed the Sunday morning experience to fit their lifestyle. They've changed the product to meet their needs.
Brand managers used to get excited when users would alter their lifestyle to fit the product - but we're going to see fewer and fewer examples of that as we move ahead.

Here's the point - if you provide a service or a product and you haven't started to think about how to make it accessible to people on their own terms, you are in danger of losing them to someone who has.

To explore this a bit deeper, check out my comments from October 12.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! You get some extra morning time, beat the noon lunch crowd, and you can even tell all your friends that YOU attend BOTH services. This is revolutionary!

Jim Seybert said...

And yet, there are people in positions of leadership who have "trouble" with this. They feel it is somehow wrong to not follow the program, as presented.

I used this example in a lecture to some MBA candidates last night and one of them claimed that his product was impossible to TiVo-ize and he was therefore "safe" from this type of thing.

My response - While his product hadn't changed (and probably wouldn't), his customers had and he would need to find a way to allow his customers to buy on their own terms.